Today at E3, we announced Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare, a full DLC expansion coming to Xbox Play Anywhere title Halo Wars 2 in Fall 2017 that sets the stage for an epic conflict between the Banished and – that’s right – the Flood!

As seen in the reveal trailer, illustrated by the impeccable team at Blur, Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare promises to expand on the epic story from the main game, where players will battle through a brand-new series of campaign missions from the perspective of the Banished and experience their desperate struggle against the terrifying Flood.

Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare is more than just a story expansion though; it is jam-packed with new content that also includes new multiplayer maps (available for all Halo Wars 2 players), gorgeous Blur cinematics, exclusive new multiplayer Leaders and Terminus Firefight, a unique game mode in the expansion set on a dynamic map where players build bases and armies to defend against waves of enemy forces. In this tower-defense style firefight mode, you can build various types of walls, mini bases, and turrets to protect your Terminus from every enemy unit imaginable including new mini bosses!

Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare expands upon an already burgeoning Halo Wars 2, where new DLC leaders have been released each month including newcomers Kinsano and Colony, as well as the cigar-chomping legend himself, Sergeant Johnson. For June, we’re releasing two new Leaders that will be playable at the Xbox E3 booth, and we still have four more Leaders (six if you include the expansion) and a new two-mission experienced called “Operation Spearbreaker” coming this year!

We’ll have more to share in the future but suffice to say, Halo and RTS fans will have a lot to look forward to this year. Stop by the Xbox booth this week if you’re attending E3 to get hands-on with Terminus Firefight and be sure to stay tuned to Halo Waypoint and Xbox Wire for all the latest news with Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare.

Our biggest news at the show is the announcement that the Halo Wars 2: Awakening the Nightmare story expansion will be releasing on September 26, 2017. This new adventure will give you a chance to spend some time as The Banished and fight like a Brute against a Flood threat to the Ark (and really the whole galaxy…the Flood doesn’t do anything halfway). We’ve been pretty excited by fans’ reactions to the Banished as new enemies in Halo and this expansion will let us all get a better understanding of what it’s like to work for Atriox. (Spoiler: Not super relaxing.)

The Flood making a return to Halo is big news, both from a Halo universe perspective (this is the threat that caused the Forerunners to kill all sentient life in the galaxy 100,000 years back…how could even someone as clever as Atriox handle it?) and because of the fun the Flood offers in a strategy game. The Flood can (and will) manifest in whatever combat forms are most deadly for a particular fight and that ever-changing threat sets up so many fun challenges to solve with the tools available in your troop, base, and leader power sandbox.

Awakening the Nightmare also adds a whole new Firefight mode called Terminus Firefight, which will let you play solo or with friends as any of our leaders against a never-ending rush of randomized enemy waves. The number of possible leader combinations with all the different leader powers and hero units is going to make this mode pretty nuts and while there will definitely be competition for highest scores, it’s going to be a great new way to team up with friends when you’re not in the mood for some Deathmatch base-rushing madness.

Add in new support for Spectator Mode and Arena tournaments, full 4K and HDR support for everybody playing on the Xbox One X, two new leaders coming in the form of the two Brutes responsible for unleashing (and hopefully re-leashing) the Flood in the new story, and two new competitive multiplayer maps and September is going to be a big month for Halo Wars 2.

It’s no secret that Halo Wars 2 is also getting enhanced for Xbox One X with visual upgrades that will also take advantage of what the newest console has to offer. Halo Wars 2 on Windows 10 PC has supported 4K resolutions since launch – and HDR was added for both Xbox One S and PC several months ago – so this update will bring all of that visual goodness over to your new Xbox One X.

But perhaps what’s even more exciting for Halo Wars 2 players are the two other additions coming to game – for everyone, on all platforms – with this next update. We’re excited to be rolling out support for Xbox Arena which will let players organize and conduct their own online tournaments in Halo Wars 2. Xbox Arena on Xbox Live officially launched in May and the 343 team has been working closely with our partners at Creative Assembly and on the Xbox platform team to bring this great feature to Halo Wars 2. Xbox Arena tournaments can be created or joined from either the Halo Wars 2 game hub or via an Xbox Club. The team is excited to see what the community will do with this awesome new feature when it rolls out in just a few weeks.

CROSSPLAYWe’ve touched on Xbox Arena before, so astute Halo Wars 2 players no doubt already knew that, but during our 10/17 live stream we also dropped breaking news of another new feature coming in the next game update – Crossplay for Xbox and Windows 10 PCs! As an Xbox Play Anywhere title, players have the ability to enjoy Halo Wars 2 on their console or PC, but up until now that has not included cross-platform online play. Crossplay has been a passion project for the team and frankly was something we weren’t sure would be feasible to incorporate at this stage in the game’s development. The team has worked hard to deliver this feature and final testing indicates it’s ready for release into the wild. Crossplay, Arena support, and the Xbox One X visual enhancements are all targeted for release in late October.